Re: Humans
Yep, under UK law, both the driver and Uber would almost certainly both be culpable. The driver for not paying attention and Uber for not only giving the "supervisor" tasks which required a lack of attention on the road, but possibly also expecting 100% attention on a task in relatively poor conditions for too long a period.
Keeping a high degree of attention on a task which basically just involves sitting there doing nothing is one of the most difficult things to do. Having spent some time as a swimming pool lifeguard many, many years ago, I can speak with some experience of that. Just standing around doing nothing is quite tiring. Which is why all the staff move around and swapped posts every 10-15 mins or so. Like supervising an autonomous car, lives are potentially at risk so you need to keep a close eye on your patch as well as a general situational awareness of the rest of the pool area and that is noticeably easier when you break off to move around. I would suggest that supervising an autonomous car should probably only ever be for an hour or so at a time, especially since these are likely to be minimum wage posts rather than well paid technical jobs.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
